The Diocese of Chester in the 19th Century
The Diocese had been created in 1541 partly from Lichfield and partly from York Dioceses. The southern boundaries were more or less as they are today but in the north they extended as far as the lake District. The Diocese was in the Province of Canterbury but was transferred to York in 1542. In 1847, two years before Christ Church opened, the northern part of the Diocese was given to the Diocese of Carlisle and East Lancashire went to the newly created Diocese of Manchester.
Until 1880, when Liverpool Diocese was formed, churchwardens used to attend Saint Nicholas' Church in Liverpool for the annual Archdeacon's Visitation.
Bishop Sumner
In 1828 John Bird Sumner became Bishop of Chester and stayed for twenty years, when he was translated to Canterbury. He had a profound effect on the Diocese. When he came, the church was not very alive. Some vicars and rectors did not live near their churches and only visited the parishes occasionally, leaving their curates to conduct the weekly services. Rural deans had no special function and parishioners on the whole were ignorant of the faith. Few could read, even if they could afford a Bible.
Bishop Sumner and his brother, later Bishop of St Asaph, were at Cambridge at a time when Samuel Wilberforce and Charles Simeon, two great evangelical theologians, had a great influence.
When John Sumner came to Chester, he set to work to bring the Gospel to the ordinary man in the street and make the church relevant to the needs of the times. He insisted that all vicars stayed in their parishes and gave rural deans a place in the structural oversight of the local churches. Rural deans had to meet the clergy of the deanery several times a year and report back to the Bishop.
Bishop Sumner saw the population of his large Diocese increasing rapidly, especially in the new manufacturing areas, including Liver-pool and Birkenhead. He appealed to the businessmen whose wealth was increasing under the Industrial Revolution, to build churches in the new towns springing up. Thus it was that many churches like our own were financed and built up by private businessmen and then given to the Church.
When Sumner left for Canterbury, Chester Diocese, though smaller, was well organised and the Gospel was being preached far more effectively.